Digital health has huge power to both mitigate and inadvertently exacerbate global health inequities. Those at the forefront of transforming our hospitals and healthcare systems bear a heavy duty to ensure the principles of health justice sit at the heart of every digital health strategy and implementation. They have tough questions to address. How to expand the use of virtual care without excluding the internet poor or digitally illiterate? How to maximise the benefits of AI while avoiding data bias? How to store ever-increasing volumes of patient data without increasing the carbon footprint and the risk of climate change-induced disasters that hit society’s poorest the hardest? Acceleration of digital health is opening new health inequality gaps: the internet savvy versus the digitally illiterate; the data rich versus the data poor. Convening prominent experts, this session will address barriers to achieving health equity, with examples of successful initiatives supporting this goal.


Learning Objectives:

• Examine how digital technologies are helping support more equitable healthcare for all, reducing disparities across the Middle East region  

• Understand how to mitigate the risk that digital health could inadvertently increase health inequalities

• Learn from successful digitally-led initiatives to achieve health equity.